The museum is subdivided into the antiquity collection, the Middle East museum, and the museum of Islamic art. It is visited by approximately 1,135,000 people every year[citation needed], making it the most visited art museum in Germany (2007), and is one of the largest in the country.[needs update]

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By the time the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum on Museum Island (today the Bodemuseum) had opened in 1904, it was clear that the edifice was not large enough to host all of the art and archaeological treasures being excavated under German supervision. Excavations were underway in the areas of ancient Babylon, Uruk, Assur, Miletus, Priene and ancient Egypt, and objects from these sites could not be properly displayed within the existing German museum system. Wilhelm von Bode, director of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, initiated plans to build a new museum nearby to accommodate ancient architecture, German post-antiquity art, and Middle Eastern and Islamic art.

Alfred Messel began a design for the large three-wing building in 1906. After his death in 1909 his friend Ludwig Hoffman took charge of the project and construction began in 1910, continuing during the First World War (1918) and the great inflation of the 1920s. The completed building was opened In 1930.

The Pergamon Museum was severely damaged during the air attacks on Berlin at the end of the Second World War. Many of the display objects had been stored in safe places, and some of the large exhibits were walled in for protection. In 1945, the Red Army collected all of the loose museum items, either as war booty or, ostensibly, to rescue them from looting and fires then raging in Berlin. Not until 1958 were most of the objects returned to East Germany. Significant parts of the collection remain in Russia. Some are currently stored in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. The return of these items has been arranged in a treaty between Germany and Russia but, as of June 2003, is blocked by Russian restitution laws.

This collection is divided between the Pergamon Museum and the Altes Museum.

The collection contains sculpture from the archaic to Hellenistic ages as well as artwork from Greek and Roman antiquity: architecture, sculptures, inscriptions, mosaics, bronzes, jewelry and pottery.

The main exhibits are the Pergamon Altar from the 2nd century BC, with a 113 meters (371 ft) long sculptural frieze depicting the struggle of the gods and the giants, and the Gate of Miletus from Roman antiquity.

As Germany was divided following the Second World War, so was the collection. The Pergamon Museum was reopened in 1959 in East Berlin, while what remained in West Berlin was displayed in Schloss Charlottenburg.

When the Bode Museum was opened in 1904, a section for Islamic art was created and later included in the Pergamon Museum (1950).

Besides Islamic artwork from the 8th to the 19th century ranging from Spain to India, the main attraction is the Mshatta facade, which originates from an unfinished early Islamic desert palace located south of Amman in present-day Jordan. It was a gift from the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II to Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany. Parts of the eastern portion of the facade and the ruins of the structure of which it formed a part remain in Jordan.

Another unique exhibition is the Aleppo room. This area of the museum features a reception room from a broker's home in Aleppo, Syria, that was commissioned during the Ottoman Period.[1]

The Islamic Art Museum also regularly hosts temporary exhibitions of modern art from the Islamic world, such as the 2008 Turkish Delight (contemporary Turkish design) and Naqsh (Gender in Iranian Art and Society).

In 2008 part of the Keir Collection of Edmund de Unger, formerly housed in his home in Ham, Surrey, was placed on long-term loan to the Museum for an initial period of 15 years. One of the most important post-war private collections of Islamic art, it covers the entire Islamic world from medieval times to the eighteenth century and includes carpets, textiles, illuminated manuscripts, bookbindings, ceramics, metalware and rock crystal objects.

The Middle East Museum exhibition displays objects found by German archeologists and others from the areas of Assyrian, Sumerian and Babylonian culture. Additionally there are historical buildings, reliefs and lesser cultural objects and jewelry.

An architectural competition in 2000 was won by Oswald Mathias Ungers from Cologne. The Pergamon Museum will be redeveloped according to his plan, which controversially proposes large alterations to buildings unchanged since 1930. The current entrance building in the Court of Honor will be replaced with a fourth wing, and an underground walk (Archäologische Promenade, archeologic walk) will connect four of the five museums. [2]

Since the end of September 2014 the museum is partially closed for renovation. The hall containing Pergamon Altar will remain closed to the general public. Initially the reopening was scheduled for 2019. [3] In November 2016 it was revealed that the renovation would not be finished before 2023 and estimated project costs would almost double to 477 million euros. Two pump houses built in the ground during the initial construction between 1910 and 1930 had been discovered causing rising costs and delays. At least 60 million euros of the increased costs are directly due to the fact that construction costs had risen since the original estimate 10 years ago. Also it was announced that a temporary exhibition space will be built opposite Museum Island, a short distance from Pergamon Museum. It will house a panorama of the ancient city by the Berlin-based artist Yadegar Asisi, a 3D reconstruction of the famous Pergamon altar by the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research and parts of the altar including the Telephos Frieze. The temporary building is scheduled to open in the spring of 2018. [4][5]